You could drive dozens of times down East 75th Street, just west of Allisonville Road, and never see it.

But if you slow down, and look beyond a ditch, tall trees and a chain-link fence, you can spot it: one of the oldest and smallest cemeteries in Marion County.

It’s about a half-acre, so compact you could walk the perimeter in about three minutes, gazing at the weathered headstones, some of them erected more than a century ago.

Like hundreds of old burial grounds across Indiana, this cemetery was abandoned decades ago. The first person was buried here in 1839 and the last one in 1943. Nowadays, people rarely visit.

You need a good push to open the small entrance gate to Deford Cemetery, blocked by a long winter of drifting leaves and sticks. There is no office or full-time grave-tender.

But pretty soon, when the last snow stops flying and the flowers start sprouting, it will be time to clean things up.

Under Indiana law, townships must maintain abandoned cemeteries out of honor for the dead. Grounds workers hired by Washington Township Trustee Frank Short will pick up debris and cut the grass and weeds around the aging headstones.

“Settlers were buried in cemeteries, and their families took care of them for a while, but now there’s no one to take care of them,” he said.

Whole families from another century are buried here. There are 22 Brunsons, 14 Defords, nine Verts and eight Van Laninghams.

There also are two Allisons and three Deans — likely the people for whom the two nearby roads, Allisonville and Dean, were named.

Some of them fought in the Civil War, including John and William Deford. The cemetery that bears their family name was originally called Battleground Cemetery.

Only a few relatives might stop in during the year, but they want to see the place spruced up and their ancestors honored, Short said.

This year, with all the heavy snow and ice, Short is expecting to find tree limbs down when work starts in a few weeks. From spring to fall, a contractor will cut the grass every few weeks.

A couple times a year, Short will get a phone call from someone out of state, asking about a great-great-grandparent, buried in one of the township’s six abandoned cemeteries. Someone from the township office will check the inventory, determine where the grave is and meet the family member at the cemetery.

On Memorial Day, small groups often show up to visit the graves. Boy Scouts and veterans groups sometimes help decorate graves.

A decade ago, Short’s predecessor, Gwen Horth, oversaw the restoration of the abandoned cemeteries. Many had been neglected for decades, with crumbling and overturned markers, and monuments covered with weeds and brush.

Horth hired a restoration specialist to repair more than 500 headstones. He used ammonia and water solution to clean up stones. In some cases, he found buried stones by using a metal rod, and used a lever-and-pulley system on a tripod to hoist large stones back onto their bases.

The cemeteries had a whole new look. But time marches on, if not for the dead, then for the living. Every spring, it’s time to get the work gloves and rakes, and clean it up again.

Call Star reporter John Russell at (317) 444-6283. Follow him on Twitter: @johnrussell99.